Undersea Guardians by Bradbury Ray

Author:Bradbury, Ray [Bradbury, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NewBook, War, Short Stories, Fantasy
Publisher: Amazing Stories
Published: 1944-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

ALITA watched in a numbed sort of feeling that was too weary to be horror.

She watched until there were three Germans left, swimming about, keeping their heads over water, yelling to God to save them. And Helene was in among them, invisible and stroking and moving quickly. Her white hands flickered up, grasped one officer by the shoulders and pulled him steadily under.

“This is a different kind of love! Make love to me! Make love! Don’t you like my cold lips?”

Alita swam off, shuddering, away from the fury and yelling and corruption. The submarine was dying, shaking its prehistoric bulk with metal agony. In another moment it would be drowned and the job done. Silence would come down again and sunlight would strike on the dead, quiet U-boat and another attack would be successful.

Sobbing, Alita swam up toward the sun in the green silence. It was late afternoon, and the water became warmer as she neared the surface. Late afternoon. Back in Forest Hills they’d be playing tennis now on the hot courts, drinking cool cocktails, talking about dancing tonight at the Indigo Club. Back in Forest Hills they’d be deciding what formal to wear tonight to that dance, what show to see. Oh, that was so long ago in the sanity of living, in the time before torpedoes crushed the hull of the U.S.S. Atlantic and took her down.

Richard, where are you now? Will you be here in a few minutes, Richard, with the convoy? Will you be thinking of us and the day we kissed goodbye in New York at the harbor, when I was on my way to nursing service in London? Will you remember how we kissed and held tight, and how you never saw me again?

I saw you, Richard. Three weeks ago. When you passed by on Destroyer 242, oblivious to me floating a few feet under the water!

If only we could be together. But I wouldn’t want you to be like this, white and sodden and not alive. I want to keep you from all this, darling. And I shall. That’s why I stay moving, I guess. Because I know I can help keep you living. We just killed a submarine, Richard. It won’t have a chance to harm you. You’ll have a chance to go to Britain, to do the things we wanted to do together.

There was a gentle movement in the water, and the old woman was at her side.

Alita’s white shoulders jerked. “It—it was awful.”

The old woman looked at the sun caught in the liquid. “It always is—this kind of death. It always has been—always will be as long as men are at war. We had to do it. We didn’t take lives, we saved lives—hundreds of them.”

Alita closed her eyes and opened them again. “I’ve been wondering about us. Why is it that just you and I and Conda and Helene and a few others survived the sinking Why didn’t some of the hundreds of others join us? What are we?”

The old woman moved her feet slowly, rippling currents.

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